Parashat Bereshit 5783 — 10/22/2022
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
Bereishit 1:1 – 6:8
Last week we looked at the idea of temporal vs logical sequence and its relation to causality. This week I want to look at some developments in modern physics and see how they might apply.
First, I’d like to look at the phenomenon of Quantum Entanglement. Quantum Entanglement challenges our notion of locality, and therefore our notions of space, but considering a scenario where a signal can apparently travel faster than the speed of light. The problem with faster-than-light travel is that it allows us to go back in time, where our actions can affect our future in a way that can lead to a contradiction. Hollywood has explored this possibility in movies like “Back to the Future” (which correctly predicted a Chicago Cubs World Series championship in 2016) and “The Terminator.”
The way Quantum Entanglement works is this. Electrons have a property called “spin.” The name comes from the days when the electron was conceived of as a spinning ball of charge. A spinning ball of charge will, classically, act as a magnetic dipole, and we do, in fact, measure that the electron behaves as if it is a magnetic dipole. Classically, the dipole can be pointing in any direction, but of course quantum mechanics throws a wrinkle into this picture. In quantum mechanics, if we try to measure the spin of a particular electron, we get one of only two values, labeled “up” and “down.” Interestingly, it doesn’t matter which axis we choose to measure the spin on – we only get one of the two states, up or down.
The “actual” state of the electron is a linear combination of the two states, but when we go to make a measurement, we get “up” with a probability equal to the square of the coefficient of the “up” state in the actual state, and we get “down” with a probability equal to the square of the coefficient of the “down” state. The particle is only “forced to choose one or the other” when we measure it.
One more point – it can be proven that there is no way to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of some “hidden variables” that are local to the particle and that we cannot, in principle, ever measure, but that will cause the measurement process to produce only the discrete states of the particle that are actually observed. In other words, the local behavior of the particle cannot be described purely by information that is local to the particle.
Now consider a setup where we have two electrons with opposite spins – the total spin of the system is zero. This is actually pretty easy to do if you are a competent experimental physicist, which I am emphatically not, so I will skip the practical details. Since the spins are opposite, if you measure electron A with spin-up, then you will always measure electron B with spin-down. This is so that the total measured spin will always be zero.
Now suppose that we take the two electrons and send them in opposite directions traveling at almost the speed of light, for a year. We have set up a detector at each end of our two-light-year experimental apparatus. One pair of electrons after another passes by our detectors and we dutifully mark the status of each electron as it arrives: up, up, down, up, down, down, down…. Our friend, at the other end of the experiment does the same thing. When they take their tally sheets and meet at the center to compare notes, they find that every time A recorded a “spin-up,” B recorded a “spin-down” and vice versa. The question is: the two measurements are made at the same time (in the reference frame of the experiment) but 2 light years apart! How could electron A possibly know what electron B’s state would be measured as?!
The answer is that the two particles are in reality one system, and they remain one system even while separated. Their spins are correlated with one another and they remain so even over the great time and distance separations involved. But maintaining that correlation violates Relativity theory, if the correlation is local in ordinary space and time. Therefore, the correlation cannot be local – it has to bind space-time points together in some way that goes outside of spacetime, into some other dimension, “You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.”
This idea, that space and time are projections of a much larger universe of many more than 4 dimensions, is also a feature of modern Unified Field theories. A Unified Field theory (there are several candidates out there) has at its basis a single field that has many different modes of vibration. Each mode of vibration corresponds to a particular type of particle (electron, muon, quark, gluon, etc.) and the interaction between these modes of vibration corresponds to the interactions between the various particles. Thus, the entire universe that we see around us is a very organized, complex pattern of vibration of one Unified Field. The reality is that the Unified Field is really all that exists, and the entire universe is really one highly correlated system – correlated (entangled!) across the vast stretches of space and time in which our perception is bound. In other words, nothing is local. Locality is just a limitation of our perception, and so is causality, at least in the way we commonly understand it.
Indeed, many flavors of Unified Field theories posit that the Unified Field does not exist in spacetime. The Unified Field exists in 8 or more dimensions, all but 4 of which are tightly “rolled up” so that only the 4 of spacetime are significant, except at exceptionally high energies. But correlations through these extra dimensions can, perhaps, be used to explain the long-distance correlations we see in our everyday space and time.
So, to return to last week’s questions, we think of Gd as the ultimate cause of the created universe, but Gd is, like the Unified Field, beyond space, time and causation. I think that just like the Unified Field, what we perceive as creation in space and time, is an internal, virtual pattern of vibration within Gd’s essence, a pattern that gives rise to time and space but is not bound by it. It is an eternally self-renewing pattern, as we say in the liturgy, “He in His goodness renews constantly the work of creation.” When our consciousness is stationed at the level of Pure Consciousness permanently, we begin to appreciate creation as it is, within Gd.
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Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Bereishit
Previously, I presented intuitions about how Never-ending Torah ends with “V’Zot HaBeracha,” the Fruit of the Never-Beginning Seed presented in “Bereishit,” In the Beginning.
• The same intuition applies as this week we continue reading Bereshit.
• ”V’Zot Ha Beracha” means, “And this is the blessing”|
Before we consider this blessing on the level of meaning, let’s consider that Torah is beyond language, beyond verbal definitions and grammar—it is the fundamental liveliness of Gd. On our level of life, of awareness, the sound value of Torah comes closer to the transcendental and all-pervading quality of Torah.
From this standpoint, here are two sources to listen to the beginning of Bereishit: the first is traditional; the second is creative.
1. Bereishit 1-8 with cantillation: Very sweet, easy to listen to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa_g1QOt9y0
2 Very lively. Award-winning singer Noa sings Bereishit with Philarmonic Rishon Le Tzion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYKMWtOlHVE
Consider Bereishit the Seed of Teshuvah — return to Oneness – and V’zot HaBeracha, the last parshah of the Five Books of Torah, the Fruit: Do we see in these parshiyyot and in our lives that the Seed has borne its intended Fruit?
If we take these parshiyyot on the plain level of meaning, no: the children of Israel (that’s not only a long time ago but today and in all times) have not yet entered the Promised Land, and Moses, the great leader, never will.
But perhaps we can say that Moses, one of the guests that visits the sukkah during Succoth, has entered Gan Eden, as tradition has it – not the terrestrial Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve were evicted – but the Heavenly Garden of Eden in which Gd is enthroned and explains Torah to the residents. Explaining Torah is not just a matter of Gd talking to people but giving the Direct Experience that Torah,Gd and all Gd’s details are One. From this standpoint, Moses and all those who enter Gan Eden have been restored to Oneness and so the seed of Bereishit has borne fruit though V’Zot HaBrachah doesn’t say so.
Later in Bereishit, we see Enoch mentioned as walking with Gd – definitely return to Oneness. Then Noah is called a righteous person, one who Gd trusts to maintain life on our planet when the rest of humanity, due its wickedness, is destroyed in the flood. Only Gd is Fully Righteous so Noah has to be One with Gd to be truly called righteous.
So even early in Torah, even taken on the level of meaning, we see examples of the fruit of the seed appearing: people who walk with Gd, who are righteous.
Also, very importantly, Gd’s Torah, One with Gd, flowed though Moses – what wonderful fruit. Punctuated by the Word, the Command, the Kiss of G-d’s mouth which Parshah V’Zot HaBrachah tells us Moses was the way Moses died. Dying by the Touch of Gd is certainly entering the Promised Land.
Before he died, Moses, man of Gd, servant of Gd, gathered all the tribes together and spoke to them first as one, as the Children of Israel, giving them the command to obey Torah; then he gave specific blessings to each tribe. This is revealing first unity, then the diversity within the unity. This is action that in its Fullness, restores each individual in a community to unity with the community while retaining the special individual role. Symbolically, this gives the Blessing of Oneness on all its Detail.
So, the Five Books of Moses end with ripe fruit.
Having considered the fruit, let us consider the seed which is contained within the fruit and to which we return as on Simchat Torah we begin again reading Bereishit. Bereishit begins in Hebrew: “Bereishit bara Elohim et HaShamayim v’et Ha’aretz…”
The way this is commonly translated to English, Bereishit reads: “In the beginning, Gd created heaven and earth…”. Since Gd is Beginingless and Endless, this cannot be true.
The way the ArtScroll Chumash and chabad.org translate it, it reads, “In the beginning of Gd’s creating the heavens and the earth…”
This is better and according to scholars more grammatically correct but still puts Gd in time and the reality is that time is a role Gd plays in pretending to be limited.
Gd is always One, Wholeness in Detail, so let’s see if we can find a meaning for “beginning” that honors this.
One way is that it refers to any point in the infinite liveliness of Gd because at any point, separation and unification are always going on, and so at any point heaven and earth are always being separated and united.
Within every point is the Whole Unbounded Ocean of Gd so everything is always going on everywhere, in sequence and also in simultaneity. To Gd, Gd is always Totally Present, Infinitely Lively, Infinitely Silent, Omnidirectional, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnijoyful, Omniloving, and so the idea of beginning is just part of Gd’s “let’s pretend” to be limited.
In addition, Wikipedia notes that not only is “bara” a verb that is only used in reference to Gd but it doesn’t mean “create,” it means “differentiate/separate, assign roles to.” From this standpoint, heaven and earth though they are always One, are perpetually separated/distinguished/ from each other and given special roles. So Bereishit refers to the beginning of distinguishing “heaven,” the inner, subtle, abstract level of the details of God, from “earth”, the concrete aspect.
Jeff Benner (ancient-hebrew.org) translates “bara” as “shaped”: from this standpoint, there is neither creating nor separating, there is only refining what already exists.
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, in his “Body, Mind and Soul: Kabbalah on Human Physiology, Disease and Healing”, notes that “create” and “heal” in Hebrew have the same root: b-r-a: from this angle, we can say that the beginning of Torah is always the beginning of healing, of return to Wholeness. This is healing individual humans of their limits and restoring us to our unlimited status as impulses of One, restoring us to our status as the Full Ocean of One functioning through our individual personalities and bodies and also through all impulses of One.
What a Joy to Be Restored to full memory of the reality that only One exists and we are This!
So, creation, healing is eternal, as Torah, the fundamental liveliness of Gd – beyond language, grammar, definition, Gd conversing with Gd – is eternal, never beginning or ending yet always New.
And there are surely many more interpretations of “Bereishit Bara Elohim” everyone’s intuitions will add to the cornucopia.
On the ordinary human level of awareness, this variety of interpretations is consistent with the way we experience life. We are always evolving and seeing more completely. As we rise to higher levels and to Consciousness beyond levels, — the Wholeness within which all levels exist—we are able to see the usefulness of each interpretation.
We humans are individual impulses of Gd who pretends to be limited for the fun of playing Hide and Seek, Peek-a-Boo in us, so Gd, pretending to be we limited souls, can have the fun of seeking as us, and Gd as Gd, can have the pleasure of Hinting and Revealing, through Torah sounds, Torah stories, Torah mitzvah and whatever way Gd Wishes.
In this game, this Game, little by little, and also suddenly, we are returned to Wholeness by Gd’s Grace Revealing.
Gd dissolves the veils of limits and reveals to us that Gd is All, within us and all around us, everywhere, One without a Second.
And this can happen with any sound of Torah, any word, any parshah, even the last one as we suddenly See and Know the Truth within the Stories.
And it can happen Now! And any Now! Wherever we are and whatever we’re doing.
Because Torah in a written book is only the most infinitesimal aspect of Torah as One with Gd, Torah as One can hint to us and reveal to us when we’re eating breakfast, walking down a street, snoozing – at any time, any place.
Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good And Evil as well as the serpent, are within us, ready to be clearly experienced as Omnidirectional, All-in-All Points of One, and the duality between Gd and the uncreated creation, is ready to be experienced as the Fun of Gd, always within Gd as One.
So, too, are all the details of Torah as the Book and Torah as Gd. Bereishit is a good seed that bears good fruit in V’Zot Haberacha and it is also the Fruit that sprouts to become all the Books of Torah and to loop back to itself with V’Zot HaBeracha.
Let’s continue doing our best to tune to Gd/Torah with “Be still and know!”; with “to love Gd with all our heart, all our soul and all our might,” with “love our neighbor as our self,” as our Self. As we do. we see, hear, taste, touch, smell the Beauty of Gd in every leaf, every sound, every bite of food, everyone and everything, everywhere.
Very encouraging!
Let’s keep on tuning.
Practice! Practice! Practice!
Baruch HaShem.